


Why I Ship Johnny/Female V (Part 1)

by rey_of_sunlight



Series: Why I Ship Johnny/Female V [1]
Category: Cyberpunk 2077 (Video Game)
Genre: Bisexuality, Essays, F/M, Meta, Voice Acting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-11
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-18 07:53:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29979717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rey_of_sunlight/pseuds/rey_of_sunlight
Summary: The first in a series of posts where I closely examine just what makes this ship so compelling. This time around, I'm looking at why Johnny/Male V doesn't work for me.
Relationships: Johnny Silverhand/V
Series: Why I Ship Johnny/Female V [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2205153
Comments: 4
Kudos: 6





	Why I Ship Johnny/Female V (Part 1)

When I write shippy fanfic, particularly shippy fanfic about a non-canonical pairing, I like to write up a document like this to keep my thoughts about them together. I thought you guys might be interested in reading Fun/Obsessive Character Analysis, so I’m popping it on here.

I approach shipping from a transformative perspective. That is to say, I’m not interested in arguing over who the ‘true’ pairing is or what the creators got ‘wrong’. For the narrative and tone that _Cyberpunk 2077_ has, it makes much more sense for Johnny and V to have a platonic bond than a romantic one, within the constraints of canon. What I am interested in is shipping as possibility. Canon is a bucket of Lego, and I am a sticky-fingered child ready to mash all the mismatching pieces together and see what happens. Canon is a treasure chest, and I am a pirate who wants to fish through the jewels and see what sets my imagination on fire. If canon offers me a self-destructive, gloriously beautiful hot mess to play with, then by God, I’m going to play with him. ;)

I started this thinking it would be a quick little piece of meta, and then it pretty much exploded. So I’m splitting this meta into a few parts, and they'll all be found in this series.

**Johnny is canonically bi. Why aren’t you interested in shipping Johnny/Male V?**

Interesting question, hypothetical questioner that I’ve made up for the purposes of this essay! There’s a few reasons for this, but I’ll get the big one out of the way first.

Male V’s English-language voice actor _sucks ass_.

Now, perhaps that’s not an entirely fair statement. Gavin Drea is one of my countrymen, after all, and shouldn’t I be banging the drum of national pride that an Irishman has made it to the world stage? But that’s exactly what’s holding him back.

You see, he plays V with a neutrally American accent. See the 2018 trailer for one such example:

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjxS9ciNlII>

But his natural accent sounds more like _this_ (skip to 1:22):

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M51U9UbCgs8>

As you can see, that’s a huge linguistic gap. Drea has completely transformed his voice to play V. For the most part, he does it valiantly enough, only letting the occasional syllable wobble back towards his real voice. But the transformation comes at a cost, and that cost is a three-dimensional performance. Male V spends most of the game sounding flat, bored or occasionally mildly scoffing. His interactions with Johnny come off as less complex relationship born of circumstance and more half-hearted pissing match.

Compare, oh, all of male V’s performance to just one line by Cherami Leigh, the English-language female V, and actual goddess of voice acting (skip to 0:05):

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kg2tnFr8SAc>

This is one routine line from one routine side quest, written to show that V is snarky and daring. But _listen_ to how she delivers it. Her tone backs up the writing, sure, but it also depicts V as energetic, too impulsive for her own good – and also bluffing to perhaps cover some nerves. There’s an investment in Leigh’s performance that’s missing from Drea’s – an investment in the world around her, and real energy and fire put into her interactions. When fictional relationships fascinate me, they fascinate me because of that kind of energy. I love ships where, no matter how much the characters insist otherwise, their energy is put first and always towards each other. And that’s exactly what Leigh’s lines deliver.

There’s also elements of Johnny’s characterisation that don’t make him and a male V feel like a realistic couple for me. My personal interpretation of Johnny is that, while he’s open about his love for Latino hunks’ cheeks, he still has some lingering internalised queerphobia.

Johnny is a guy who acts and talks Like A Man (TM). He puts a lot of pride in his ability to fight, in his swagger and his daring, his ability to ‘get girls’. These traits are morally neutral, and it’s not a bad thing to be proud of them in and of themselves. But it’s clear that Johnny draws a lot of his self-esteem from living up to an ideal of masculinity, and putting down any traits in himself or others that don’t match that ideal.

Canonically, Johnny was born in the late 80s. He remembers a world where any semblance of liking men whatsoever made you a pansy, a pussy, a flaming queer. And that doesn’t just go away because you woke up fifty years into the future.

So Johnny is deeply invested in a model of masculinity that violently excludes the possibility of being attracted to men. He also grew up in a much more queerphobic time. Taken together, it makes sense that he’d be repressed, if not totally alienated, from the truth of his sexuality.

But what about that ‘Latino hunks’ comment, though?

Here’s what I think. Johnny is dealing with his bisexuality in a way that’s unfortunately all too common, where you tell yourself you might want a quick fuck with your own gender, but you can only truly love the opposite sex. Kerry was a threat not just because ‘he had a dick’, but because he represented the possibility of having a meaningful, loving relationship with another man. (This is something I plan on exploring a lot in fanfic, by the way).

Johnny grows and develops a lot through the course of the game. But I don’t see him getting past that particular roadblock by the time the ending rolls around. Even if he did have romantic feelings for male V, he’s not going to admit it to himself. While he can admit that he regrets not fucking Kerry, Johnny’s spent the whole game jostling competitively with another man. And he can’t dismiss male V as a permanent bottom or a pussy. 

Up next: delving into Feelings about M/F couples in fiction, as well as how V is written, and how these relate to the ship at hand. 


End file.
